Posts for tag: cosmetic dentistry

You want to look your best for that once-in-a-lifetime moment — like your wedding day. It can also take time and effort: many people spend months losing weight or trimming up at the gym. But while you’re getting the rest of your body ready for the big event, don’t forget your smile.

The best approach is to make a plan that addresses your smile’s shortcomings — a “smile makeover,” if you will. And the best place to begin is with us, your family dentist. We’re already familiar with your dental health status, so we can advise you on what’s possible and best for you.

We can also provide many of the services that enhance smile appearance. If your teeth are relatively healthy and attractive, a thorough dental cleaning or a whitening application can revive your smile’s brightness just in time for the big day. And for minor defects like a chipped tooth or discolored old fillings, we can bond the latest tooth-colored materials to those unsightly areas. And any of these procedures can be performed in one visit.

Installing porcelain veneers is an effective way to restore more moderate tooth defects. These thin outer coverings with life-like color, shape and texture can effectively hide mild to moderate chipping, discoloration or slight gaps between teeth. Teeth with more extensive damage can be completely covered with a crown made of similar life-like materials. Either of these solutions could match the shape and color of nearby teeth.

By planning well enough ahead, you may also benefit from more extensive cosmetic changes. Missing teeth always pose a challenge, but there are a number of viable options: fixed bridges using adjacent teeth; various denture solutions, including implant-supported removable overdentures; and the dental implant, the rising star for dental restorations that replaces both the root and crown with a durable, life-like tooth. There are also orthodontic solutions for misaligned teeth (at any age!) and surgical procedures for gums that help restore lost tissue or correct a “gummy” smile showing too much of the gums.

Whatever your needs, there’s a way to make your smile more attractive. It’ll be all the more reason to display it confidently on your special day.

We readily understand the physical costs of a decayed tooth or infected gums — pain, discomfort and loss of function. It’s much more difficult to understand the emotional and social costs of a lost smile. Without that understanding we may be tempted to view restorative solutions as a luxury we can’t afford.

But there is a definite cost to a smile that embarrasses or makes you unhappy. It can inhibit your friendships and family relations and cause you to become withdrawn from others. Your career may suffer, especially if your vocation involves networking or similar social outreach where you no longer feel free to be outgoing. Most of all, though, your own feelings about your look can keep you from pursuing the things you love or that matter the most to you.

Viewed in that light, a “smile makeover,” a comprehensive approach to transforming your appearance, is an investment in a better life, not a frivolity. Although the word “cosmetic” can mean “a superficial outer adornment,” in the dental profession the meaning is much deeper. Dentists who specialize in smile design are focused on the overall effect of their work — not only with your mouth but with your whole face.

The process begins with a complete examination of your mouth to identify your particular dental needs. We also want to know about your expectations and desires for a better smile. We use that, along with the realities of your physical condition and other factors, to develop a treatment plan. The plan may be as singular as whitening procedures or porcelain veneers applied to the outside of your teeth — or it may be comprehensive with a variety of procedures that could include other specialties like orthodontics or oral surgery. The overall aim is to develop a plan that’s right for you, and realistically satisfies your expectations.

The end result can be life-changing. Even subtle changes can alter your own image perceptions and free you to be yourself in your personal and professional relationships. In the end the positive impact of your new smile will more than offset the costs for achieving it.

Porcelain veneers are positive proof that unattractive teeth don't always require an intensive restoration to regain their beauty. These thin layers of translucent porcelain — custom-designed and color-matched to blend with your other teeth — are permanently bonded to the visible side of your front teeth.

Although they can't remedy every tooth defect, they're well suited for mild to moderate disfigurements like chipping, staining or gaps. There are now two types of porcelain veneers: the traditional veneer and the “no-prep” veneer.

The standard veneers require some tooth structure removal, referred to as “tooth preparation.” This is because although they're a millimeter or less in thickness, they can still appear bulky if bonded to an unprepared tooth. To accommodate their width, it's necessary to remove some of the tooth enamel. This permanently alters the tooth so that it will need some form of restoration from that time on.

In recent years, however, other veneer options have emerged that reduces — or even eliminates — this tooth alteration. No-prep veneers are so thin they can be applied to a tooth with virtually no preparation. A more common option, minimal-prep, requires only a minor reshaping with an abrasive tool to ensure the fitted veneer looks as natural as possible. Because of their thinness, these veneers also don't have to fit under the gum line like standard veneers.

To obtain no- or minimal-prep veneers, your tooth enamel needs to be in good, healthy shape. They're also best suited for people with small or worn teeth, narrow smiles (the side teeth can't be seen from the front), or slightly stained or misshapen teeth.

Because there's little invasiveness, these low preparation veneers won't typically create tooth sensitivity and they can often be applied without any form of anesthesia. And because tooth structure isn't removed, they can be “uninstalled” to return to your natural look. Of course, that's not always an easy process since the bonding between veneer and the enamel is quite strong, although today's lasers can be used to detach the veneer quite easily.

If you'd like to consider these minimally invasive veneers, talk with your dentist. If you're a good candidate, you may be able to gain a new smile without much change to your natural teeth.

Digital computer technology has made a big impact on cosmetic dentistry. We can now simulate on a monitor display of your face how your new smile will appear after dental work, thanks to a graphics program specifically designed for cosmetic dentistry.

While that's an amazing development, we can also take it a step further by creating the look of a new smile on your actual teeth during an office visit. We call it a “trial smile.”

To create a trial smile, we begin with composite resin, a tooth-colored bonding material, and fashion it into temporary veneers or crowns that we then temporarily place over your teeth. This gives us the chance to see what your new smile will look like in all three spatial dimensions (rather than the two-dimensional view on a computer monitor) and while your face is in motion as you talk and smile. This can give us a great deal more detail to help better evaluate your proposed look.

A trial smile also helps us in planning your new look. Like you, we want the best result possible: a trial smile allows us to see how your jaw movement interacts with your updated look and if everything works together as it should. It will also give us a better idea how much tooth structure we'll need to remove to accommodate your permanent veneers or crowns — the less, of course, the better.

Although you won't be able to take your trial smile with you when you leave, we can take a photograph you can review later, as well as show friends and family for their opinion. Trial smiles do add some cost to treatment, but the proportion of expense to the benefit of actually viewing your smile in this fashion is well worth it. It's one more way we can ensure your final new smile meets your expectations.

Our main focus as your dentist is to keep your teeth and gums healthy and functional. But there’s another important aspect of care — your teeth’s appearance. It’s not just a superficial concern: your smile can have a profound effect on your self-image, as well as your personal and professional relationships.

This is the realm of cosmetic dentistry: served by both specialists and general dentists, it focuses on altering your teeth’s appearance with treatments as basic as teeth whitening or as comprehensive as dental implants. The goal, however, is the same: a new, more attractive smile.

In a way, cosmetic dentistry begins with you and oral hygiene. The twin tasks of brushing and flossing to remove dental plaque not only lowers your risk for tooth decay or periodontal (gum) disease, they also improve the appearance of the tooth surface. There are, however, circumstances where otherwise healthy or repaired teeth may need extra cosmetic attention due to chipping, misshape or staining. In these cases, a truly cosmetic approach may be necessary.

One approach is to cover a tooth’s blemishes. Veneers, for example, are thin, layered pieces of dental porcelain shaped and colored like natural teeth that are bonded to the outside of an unattractive tooth. In other cases, a tooth may require a life-like porcelain crown that completely covers it to gain the same effect.

Missing teeth, of course, pose a different challenge, but here there are a wide range of solutions: dental implants, fixed bridgework or removable full or partial dentures. Advancements in dental materials and techniques can produce new teeth that are so life-like and natural that they’re imperceptible from the real thing.

Â These and other measures like orthodontics can all be used to turn a smile you find embarrassing into one you’re confident to share with the world. It begins, though, with both you and us taking a good, close look at your current smile — a smile analysis, if you will.

After assessing both your current needs and your expectations for change, we can develop an appropriate treatment plan. It might be quite simple or with multiple treatment stages, but it will be the best plan for you. Through cosmetic dentistry we have the means to help you achieve a new, more confident smile.